'Pretty good' is all he was allowed by the racist, worker and women hating, gun fetishists that seized the House.

As he's pointed out so often, he's not a liberal. He doesn't have a liberal agenda

His environmental record is shaping up to be a lousy one and his economic policies favor corporations and the wealthy far, far more than they do the middle classes and the poor.

And Will did NOT say that President Obama is "right wing".

working in a corrupt and broken system.

One person was never going to solve all of our problems. But since he has nothing to lose at this point, I wish that he would push back harder and speak up more about the systemic rot at the core of our democracy- media monopolies, money in politics, gutting of the social safety net, wealth inequality, etc.

what the fuck is wrong with our system of government and what they, personally, as workaday schmoes can do about it.

and the unprecedented degree of Repug obstruction, it's as good as anyone could have expected.

...but he is a very talented bullshit artist...he is a politician after all..

I don't think anyone actually said he was the best president since Lincoln, either.

it's not at all uncommon for that to be uttered here.

It's also not at all uncommon.

So yes, there's plenty who say he's right-wing.

Especially if you're going to use Nixon as the measuring stick.

I'd also put Obama where "center-left" currently sits. The fact that this is roughly where Nixon was just reflects the decades of Republican work we have to undo.

and on many issues both Obama and Clinton, the post-Reagan Democratic presidents, have been considerably to the right of Nixon, the last (ignoring the forgettable Mr. Ford) pre-Reagan Republican president.

What has happened is that the media has taken to moving the dividing line between left and right to wherever the Democratic leadership happens to be. They've moved inexorably right since 1980, and so has the "official" demarcation line.

Compare the social policies of the last actual center left president: LBJ, to those of Obama or Clinton.

Reading what you wrote, "try it".

We are done.

on economic issues or intelligence agency issues. Supporting the XL-Pipeline, fracking, the TPP, drone strikes, and cutting SS are not stands of a "center-lefty." No "center-lefty" would appoint Gen Clapper, Gen Alexander, etc.

As a more serious response, the key phrase in that post is currently sits. "Center-left" is far to the right of it's historical position, due to the Republicans being so successful at dragging our politics to the right.

It's not going to stay there - we're overdue for a correction, and it's coming.

But such realignments take time. It took 20 years for the realignment that let Reagan win. It took another 30 years to get us to where we are today.

It's gonna take a while for it to swing back.

wait too long.

be to the right.

And please stop making things up.

They move.

The GOP has spent the last 50 years moving "Center" to where "Right" used to be. Democrats got cowed when Reagan won, and didn't effectively fight it for the last 30 years.

That means right now, "center-left" is what was "right" in 1960.

But change does not only go in one direction. The country will be swinging far to the left. What is "left" today will be "center-right".

Where the hell is that center?

He got some lousy foreign policy advice from National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski on some occasions, but his human rights advocacy and his work to bring Arabs and Jews together for peace talks was quite commendable. And he wasn't chomping at the bit to send US troops into action, as his successor was.

On the home front, he presented a visionary energy bill that would have made a huge difference in today's energy situation if his successor hadn't trashed it. He supported the ERA, and helped expand college aid to needy students (Thanks, Jimmy!). He set aside vast areas of public lands to prevent their despoilment by his successor, and his Interior Secretary, Cecil Andrus, was one of the best. His Cabinet as a whole was arguably better than anything that has succeeded it.

He's "pretty good."

He's not my ideal Democrat or ideal President, but he's not a RWer and he's generally liberal-ish on social issues.

We could do worse. I expect we will with the next nominee since nobody who actually seems to want to run is an improvement on Obama.

I like the man as a human being.
He was handed a shit-show, and has way too many people out to destroy him.
Given that, he's handled it pretty well.
But he's not the "transformational figure" he was made out to be.

Too bad, really.

Which of course places him out of sight compared to any conservative.

hopefully, not as good as the next.

actually, as long as he can hold off war with Iran and Syria, he's got a passing grade.

but that's a terribly low bar to measure to (the last president) .. lol

i have to think of it as a "rebuilding term"..lol

"That he's not some right-wing bullshit artist, but he's also not the greatest president since Lincoln? "

...that's an accurate statement. In fact, it would be true if someone thinks Obama is among one of the best or better Presidents.

I asked this question a few years ago.

Exactly who is President Obama being compared to?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x524622

That was 2010, and his record was already under attack.

Should we just pretend that the issues he is awful on don't exist?

speech at the Democratic Convention to be a ringing endorsement of "centrism" and neoliberal economics. When he bragged to Bill O'Reilly on national TV that Richard Nixon was more liberal than him in many respects - he was telling the truth. But then again - no out and out liberal or progressive actually running on a liberal or progressive agenda has even come close to winning the Democratic Party presidential nomination since 1972 - more than forty years ago.

a progressive/liberal or Keynesian economic agenda or any sort a shift away from neoliberal economic assumptions at all or anything resembling a return to the New Deal and Great Society

this congress has obstructed him at every turn.

and not Clown Congress and the Tea Party terrorists. We can only speculate how the state of the country would be with a functioning Congress.

A Republican? That's not much of a measuring stick. He's been good on some social issues, yes-- but that's to be expected from Third Way Democrats. That's the veneer that allows them to bill themselves as 'not GOP'.

The fact is that Barrack Obama came into office with enormous public support and a real mandate for change. Compared to what a liberal could've accomplished in his place, I can't call him "pretty good", no. I think his presidency has been a colossal disappointment, and a squandered opportunity. The country was ready for something big and instead, it got another center right, corporate Democrat who only sold himself as something he was not to win the election, and then set about protecting the 1%.

he has definitely made some positive moves - ACA, DADT, saving the auto industry

however, he has been reluctant to move aggressively in other areas

I think what I find most troubling is that he appears VERY reluctant to upset, or even challenge, the status-quo

The rest is a matter of personal perception, and perception is everything.

I agree with that statement.

But it will really take years to truly put his presidency in perspective. I was born in 1968 and he is potentially the best president of my lifetime. I think LBJ was way more progressive but the year I was born the streets were filled with protestors shouting hey hey LBJ how many kids have you killed today? But now he is a liberal icon. Truman left office very unpopular but is also now a liberal icon. So.....

I still say he is the best POTUS we've had in my lifetime. IMO.

fantastic in comparison to Reagan or either Bush, then things are obviously more than a bit skewed.

Otherwise, though, you may well be correct.

I liked the man as a kid and I felt I could trust him. Reagan and the Bush brood made me realize that even stupid men could be in charge of the country. It was a blow to my naivete.

I mean, he at least tried to get an early start on the alternative energy bandwagon, but thanks to knee-jerk idiocy (as if muscle cars couldn't run just as well on bio-fuels or electricity ) we never got that stuff off that ground. Till now, I guess, when it almost seems too late.

If you remove all of the fabricated scandals that no one has been able to show there was any wrong doing, there has been nothing. I remember most of the previous administrations having issues, but there seem to be none in the Obama administration. If all Issa can do is Benghazi and "fast and furious" it shows that this is a really clean administration.

I'm happy he is President, and doubly glad he beat McCain and especially Romney. However his education policy is horrible and the man he has chosen to run the Department of Education, with his talking points and contempt for teachers, could have easily worked for the last President.

Even Europeans didn't think he'd be elected, because Europeans view the U.S. as basically "racist." Europeans were shocked he was elected, because they're right, we're dealing with half the country being Republican, and as we know, they are racist, sexist, religious nutjobs whose intent is seldom good and sometimes downright evil.

I think he's done a hella job against these a-holes that have made every second of his every day a living hell. Anyone who says not, is delusional.

has made the TPP a priority. It's delusional to state that President Obama has pushed fracking and expanded it on public lands. It's delusional to suggest that his appointments to the USTR have been those who lobbyed for Monsanto and DuPont and SOPA. It's delusional to suggest that the President promised to reform NAFTA and then went and pushed the even worse TPP and the TTIP. It's delusional to suggest that his drone policies killed thousands of people. It's delusional to suggest that President Obama pointlessly but enthusiastically embraced the surge in Afghanistan and went with it for way too long.

At least those are all either delusions in your mind, or just inconsequential little nothing policies and positions.

Making everything about race and thus trying to portray criticism of President Obama and his policies? Ugh.